Monster In The Snow

Tubing At Liberty

Spur of the moment tubing fun at Liberty--only a little over an hour away.

The First Appreciable Snow

In three winters.  Really, Palmer's first chance to really play in the snow.  He was not terribly impressed.  It lasted 10 minutes and then he was tired and needed a nap.

Snow Baby!

Palmer made it to his third winter with no snow photos! Finally, in mid-March it happened. He loved it. So did I.

Tube Tube Tube!

Here's a little photo album from our past weekend on our annual family tubing trip to Wintergreen. As usual, it was a blast. Connor is wearing the bright orange hat in the tubing pics. It was frosty cold and the runs were FAST.

Figure Skates Would Be Mighty Fine!

We headed to Reston Town Center for some seasonal fun last night and the boys hit the rink. Connor, specifically, hit the rink about 50 times.



He'd taken lessons in the past at the Ashburn Ice House, but that was some time ago. So when he asked for hockey skates at the rental counter, I just shrugged it off. Big mistake. He got about 10 feet on the ice and fell 4 times---each time it took him FOREVER to get back up. He was missing those nice grippy teeth on the front of figure skates. So, Bob lifted him over the rink rail (after getting hockey skate kicked in the nuts a few times) and we swapped them out for some nice ratty size 3 plastic figure skates. Improvement was rapid from there. And Daddy did great--not a single tumble on hockey skates--considering that he calculates that it has been approximately 37 years since he last enjoyed the blades of glory. But it was freezing out there. Despite my mega gloves and silky long johns, it was bitterly cold. I was a bit jealous, but at 19 weeks pregnant, I thought better of it and just watched. I saw a couple of people go down really really hard. One guy cracked his head so hard I actually thought his friends should call 911. And the most adorable, chubby east indian lady (about 50 years old) wearing a black and white houndstoooth jacket over a dark blue sari went down like a ton of bricks. She actually bounced. She shook it off like nothing and skated onward, though. It was nice out there an everyone seemed festive and happy.

We followed that up with a fantastic dinner at Jackson's Might Fine Food and Lucky Lounge. Bob had never been before. It was so good. Really good. The deviled eggs with jicama and maple pecans with bacon are incredible. The lobster mac and cheese cannot be adequately described. And, as usual, my lobster roll was splendiferous. And Connor wolfed down my fire grilled corn on the cob. He had his headphones in watcing a show on his iPod and reached over and banged on my plate near the corn. I asked him if he wanted some and his answer was a nod of the head and the simple statement "ALL OF IT". After dinner I wandered over to Pitango alone to grab some gelato and discovered their Sicilian Almond. Heaven in a cup. Really. This stuff is what I think chubby angels must smell like. And I love going outside with my gelato and not having it melt! You can eat it slowly and really enjoy it. That's one benefit of frigidity!! We went home and watched a Harry Potter movie (we're one behind) and everyone stayed up way too late. Not a creature was stirring in Tatertown until about 9am today.

More On Snow

We had ALOT of fun in that snow. Including 5 total hours of sledding on Sunday. The neighborhood kid's plastic saucers were the best. Our foam speed sled got kicked to the snowy curb. We built a nice jump that you can see in the left lower corner of the pic above. You could catch some serious air on that thing. And, really, only once in awhile did it result in the above outcome. Not that there was anything wrong with that!

We even got some nice driveway sledding and sliding down the snow pile that ended up at the front of the drive. Its been a long time since that snow fell, but we still have a fair amount of it, albeit dirty, lingering in the cooler areas.

The Flakes Just Keep On Coming

Here's similar shots at 10:30am. Snowing hard but you can't really see it in the pics. In the second shot, Bob had just finished shoveling the driveway. Yes--finished. No sooner would he finish a row, it would fill right back up. I had a two hour nap and woke up to the same relentless barrage of flakes. I love it. It's almost 4:30 right now and Connor is out there somewhere in the white-out trying to sled behind the house. Once in a while you see a flash of his green coat. Maybe he should have an avalance pinger on him.